McDonald Fragment R Collision Animation

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The R Impact from McDonald Observatory

This movie shows Jupiter at the time the R fragment impacted.
The event was observed with three of the McDonald Observatory
telescopes. The 2.7-m telescope was equiped with an IR camera
which was imaging through a filter at 2.12 microns which
isolates molecular hydrogen. The 2.1-m telescope was obtaining
moderate resolution spectroscopy. The 0.8-m telescope was imaging
with a CCD camera through a filter which isolated methane
at 0.89 microns. The observations were all obtained with some
cloud cover and at high airmass (thus variable seeing).
The impact took place on the lower left edge of the planet.

The movie starts with the CCD images. In these images, there is no
flash seen from the impact. Two scars are clearly visible from
earlier impacts. A third scar is faintly seen on the limb which
is about to be impacted.

The second part of the movie is the IR images. In these images
there are actually two flashes seen from the R impact. The first
is very small. This precursor flash has been seen by others.
The second is quite substantial. The apparent saturation of the impact
site is actually from the scaling of the images so that some
of the planet detail can be seen. The image jitter is incomplete
image registration. The little dots which move about on the images
are bad pixels which have not been removed.